Discovery of 50km Cave Raises Hopes For Human Colonisation of Moon (theguardian.com) 140
New submitter Zorro shares a report: Scientists have fantasised for centuries about humans colonising the moon. That day may have drawn a little closer after Japan's space agency said it had discovered an enormous cave beneath the lunar surface that could be turned into an exploration base for astronauts. The discovery, by Japan's Selenological and Engineering Explorer (Selene) probe, comes as several countries vie to follow the US in sending manned missions to the moon. Using a radar sounder system that can examine underground structures, the orbiter initially found an opening 50 metres wide and 50 metres deep, prompting speculation that there could be a larger hollow. This week scientists at the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (Jaxa) confirmed the presence of a cave after examining the hole using radio waves. The chasm, 50km (31 miles) long and 100 metres wide, appears to be structurally sound and its rocks may contain ice or water deposits that could be turned into fuel, according to data sent back by the orbiter, nicknamed Kaguya after the moon princess in a Japanese fairytale. Jaxa believes the cave, located from a few dozen metres to 200 metres beneath an area of volcanic domes known as the Marius Hills on the moon's near side, is a lava tube created during volcanic activity about 3.5bn years ago.
Re: Ice or water deposits (Score:2)
Pressurizing it would mean to seal all walls and to build 100m bulkheads. This is hard.
But even without that you get shielding against radiation and against micro meteoroids. Both are useful to have and hard to come by on the Moon.
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The entire thing doesn't need to be habitable, the habitable structures could be built inside it to take advantage of the additional protection. Presumably it would also be best to build any structures in a location that won't be hit by the sun to avoid the expansion and contraction every time the sun appears or goes away.
I think we're in agreement though based on the comment you replied to.
Re: Ice or water deposits (Score:5, Interesting)
Sealing it isn't all that hard.
Install primary bulkhead mounts and temporary face.
Vaporise regolith into a vapor of (mostly) glass and use that to pressurize the interior.
By default the escaping gas will condense and create a glass fill of all cracks.
Not hard, but not low energy either.
Optionally use inert gas to charge the space while aerosolizing some type of epoxy, but that will be more material intensive.
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If there are large fissures, instead of merely small cracks, wouldn't that vaporized glass just escape into space with no hope of ever sealing up the fissures?
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It would just take longer and more vaporised regolith. Some glass will adhere to the sides of the fissure, then eventually it will build up. There is, of course, a breach size that above which is impractical to seal with vapor deposition, and I would assume it to be anything over a decimeter or so.
I should also add that once a seal is achieved there should be an overpressure test of at least 5x working pressure.
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Vaporise regolith into a vapor of (mostly) glass and use that to pressurize the interior....Not hard, but not low energy either.
LOL... Not being low energy is what makes that idea very hard to do... on the moon no less. You'd have to mine raw materials and refine into a suitable fuel, or land a nuclear power plant on the moon.
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Just need to land or build enough solar panels (well, I say "just" as though that would be easy). There's lots of energy available on the moon.
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Those bulkheads only need to hold back 1bar, and realistically you could probably go down to 0.5 (while maintaining the same PPO2), and it'd still be fine. Your better design would probably be a series of bulkheads that progressively raise the pressure, which would also help for airlocking in and out (as going from 1bar to 1/3, as is typical in space suits, is a good way to give your astronauts the bends.
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if you go down in pressure, you actually need need to go up in concentration of O2.
suits may be at a lower pressure, but they are also running at 100% O2.
reason being the lower pressure makes it more difficult to breath, as you get less of an assist from the differential between lungs and ambient forcing the air into your lungs. absent the increased concentration, astronauts need to work harder to breathe. by increasing the concentration, the astronaut can still get enough O2 while also allowing his diaphra
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Well, the immediate plan is probably to send in some sort of rover to investigate, which should be exciting. I hope they can find a cute backronym for SPELUNK.
Re:Ice or water deposits (Score:5, Funny)
Self-Propelled Explorer for LUNar Kaves?
So close...
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Eh, so name it SPELUNC instead and call it a day.
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Scientific Project for Exploration of Lacuna Underneath Natural Keyholes
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I think we can definitely confirm that any water will be INSIDE the rocks and will require that we mechanically remove it by crushing OR it will have to be totally shaded, even from indirect light. Water would sublime into vapor if exposed to the vacuum of space with even a small amount of light from the sun.
So basically, man will have to dig up and crush fairly large quantities of the moon's crust to get to the water therein. Where this is better than having to bring along large quantities of H2O, savi
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The ideal scenario would be to find a lava tube close enough to the polar crater ice deposits that you can bring in easily-accessible ice.
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I think we can assume that any water definitely would be in the form of ice?
Well, we can assume that any water would not be in the form of liquid or vapor.
It could be in the form of permafrost-- ice mixed with crushed rock-- or in the form of water of hydration.
Re:Ice or water deposits (Score:5, Informative)
I think we can assume that any water definitely would be in the form of ice?
The bit about water/ice being potentially present in this multi-billion-year-old system of lava tubes is pure speculation on the part of "Zorro", the submitter of TFS, and/or the /. editor msmash, who posted it to the front page. No such theory is presented in the article from The Guardian (to which TFS links), by the press release from JAXA [phys.org], as published on phys.org (from which The Guardian's article is most likely drawn), or in the abstract of the actual Geophysical Research Letters article [wiley.com] (full "text" - meaning PDF, of course - paywalled courtesy of Wiley).
Which makes that part complete bullshit, added by someone who had no basis to include it as part of TFS, other than for the purpose of enhancing its clickbait potential. Or, in other words, business as usual for the new, steadily-deteriorating /.
Damn, I miss CmdrTaco ...
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Water ice has been found near the poles, there's no particular reason there couldn't be more around buried deep: this is speculation but not stupid speculation.
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doom commented:
Water ice has been found near the poles, there's no particular reason there couldn't be more around buried deep: this is speculation but not stupid speculation.
So we agree that it's speculation - and my point that the speculation is that of the author (or the editor - with /. summaries it's hard to know which) of TFS, and that it's not mentioned in The Guardian's article, the JAXA press release, or the actual Geophysical Review Letters abstract stands ...
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I don't see any claim about ice:
appears to be structurally sound and its rocks may contain ice or water deposits that could be turned into fuel
Do you need a dictionary for the meaning of the word "may"?
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Thirty4 noted:
The Guardian made the ice claim. Not sure were the Guardian got it, but straight from the Guardian article - "The chasm, 50km (31 miles) long and 100 metres wide, appears to be structurally sound and its rocks may contain ice or water deposits that could be turned into fuel, according to data sent back by the orbiter, nicknamed Kaguya after the moon princess in a Japanese fairytale."
Thanks for clarifying that.
Re: Ice or water deposits (Score:2)
depends if R. Daneel Olivaw left the heating on.
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I'm just reading this article now. I can't believe no one else has a reply about R. Daneel Olivaw. But then, Asimov is one of my two favorite authors.
Re: Ice or water deposits (Score:2)
Really interesting history behind him too. Taught at Boston University at the height of the cold war, consulted for rand corporation. That guy knew secrets...
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I think we can assume that any water definitely would be in the form of ice?
It's condensation from the exogorth's breath.
Is the cave full of moon cheese? (Score:1)
If so, it probably tastes great and is all blue and shining and only exists in a limited quantity and becomes more worth than gold on Earth.
"hopes"?? (Score:1)
Who hopes for that? The Moon is a dead, airless, deadly hell. What precisely would humans do there? Are there any people living at the bottom of the ocean?
Why not? Why doesn't anyone hope for that?
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i hope for atlanteans/mer people all the time....
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Good point...
However, the idea is that if we had enough raw materials on the moon, we could use them to build and fuel space craft and forego having to claw all this stuff off the ground into orbit, which is the most expensive 100 mile trip for this stuff.
It's a nice idea I suppose.
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What precisely would humans do there?
Moon jobs because there won't be any left on Earth.
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Maintain a spaceship fueling port?
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A terrible place for a telescope. It is not gravity free, the electrostatically suspended lunar dust is a serious hazard, and if working in the infrared the lunar surface emission is a big problem. The only scheme floating around for telescopes on the Moon are quite speculative ones of dubious value (like this one [space.com]).
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Aerocebo style on dark side maybe.
Always shielded from earth's EM noise is a hell of a plus.
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Aerocebo style on dark side maybe.
The dark side? Perhaps you mean the far side? Which is lit half the time.
Too much Pink Floyd in the 80s?
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Too much Pink Floyd
No such thing.
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^^Thank you, this is a correct statement.
And to GP Post, yes I did mean far side (and possibly too much Pink Floyd, but I will neither confirm or deny that).
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Re:"hopes"?? (Score:4, Funny)
I don't know what I'd do there, but I'd be all for moving to the moon as long as I can go outside and bounce around on the surface every once in awhile while giving the finger to the Earth.
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What precisely would humans do there?
Science, and build catapults to hurl rocks at the earth ala "The Moon is a Harsh Mistress".
In seriousness though, science and redundancy to the human species if the colony can be made fully self supporting... though repatriation to the earth might be impossible for any generation not undergoing prep for it from near birth.
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You fill the cave with air, and start a lunar tourism business, and rent people wings so they can fly around in it...
(Isn't anyone familiar with the classics any more?)
But of course *some* people would rather stay in New Jersey and play video games in the basement.
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I'd be satisfied with glider wings. But yes, to fly...
live together... (Score:3)
Re:live together... (Score:5, Insightful)
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Until we start digging into the sides of it to get at water/precious gems.
On the other hand, at 0.125G, if it does collapse, you'll have more time to get out of the way!
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solution: don't dig into the side of your home on the moon.
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Moon maddness will have you gnawing on the walls, thinking it's cheese. Never bunk with a loonie moonie, and always keep your p-suit near.
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And when we start emitting water vapor and heat inside this tube that has been cold vacuum for 3+Bn years, how's that gonna play? Could be fine...
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No, no.. It will be made in China...
Maybe one of these days people will actually visit (Score:3, Funny)
Who would have thought 50 years ago that we'd actually be exploring the moon one day?
One fish, two fish (Score:2)
There are just too many reasons why faking the moon landings would have been impossible. The only logical answer is that they faked faking the moon landings.
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The tricky part wasn't faking the video. The tricky part was convincing the Russians to go along with our story.
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Naw, the US went there to beat the Russians. After that job was done, there wasn't really a compelling reason to go back.
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Who would have thought 50 years ago that we'd actually be exploring the moon one day?
Who would have thought 100,000 years ago we'd still be looking for caves to live in.
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Hipsters will pay top dollar for that real estate!
The highest bids of all will come from wealthy Londoners:
https://www.unbelievable-facts... [unbelievable-facts.com]
an offical statement: (no, really) (Score:2)
The Agriculture Ministry is not in charge of Gundam [bbc.co.uk]
Did we learn nothing from the American Indians? (Score:2)
Just like humans to go and dispossess a bunch of peaceful aliens that never even bothered us to begin with, just because we want a precious resource the lands they occupy have in abundance.
Also Mars (Score:2)
Just like humans to go and dispossess a bunch of peaceful aliens that never even bothered us to begin with, just because we want a precious resource the lands they occupy have in abundance.
Not to mention we sent a probe to Mars with a deadly "heat ray" weapon.
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No aliens there, unless you count the Nazis.
Any selenites? (Score:2)
Any day now, they will find the remains of an ant-creature civilization, and the skeletal of Mr. Cavor.
Right next to the giant see-saw crystal thingy that powered the selenite civilization.
Obligatory Star Wars reference (Score:3, Funny)
But the burning question is.... (Score:3, Insightful)
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Have they uncovered the monolith yet?
Yes, of course.. Wasn't that 16 years ago now?
Empire Strikes Back (Score:5, Funny)
"That's no cave."--Han Solo.
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"That's no moon", and it was Obi-Wan who said it.
That's a colossal cave (Score:2)
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Guys be careful (Score:2)
location for moon space elevator (Score:1)
Cacodemons anyone? (Score:2)
We might want to avoid sending any space marines.
Dark Side - Stay Away (Score:1)
Just stay away from the Dark side of the Moon.....
Doesn't really make sense (Score:2)
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Who said anything about "need"? The list of technologies we don't need (but developed anyway, simply because we like them) is a lot longer than the list of technologies we do need.
Great just great (Score:2)
Let's,
Muck up another heavenly body. I can see it now, a Starbucks around every crater.
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NONSENSE !!
We've certainly screwed the pooch (Score:2)
on earth, but we'll have to screw it up a lot more before the moon starts looking like a good alternative.
No food, no water, no air. Hmmmm.
Mine shaft gap (Score:2)
OK the race is on for whichever nations can grab the best caves on the moon!
Then the cave wars begin.
What could go wrong? (Score:2)
> structurally sound and its rocks may contain ice or water deposits that could be turned into fuel
Let's seal this cave airtight and fill it with sweet breathable air. Then let's start digging out the cave walls for fuel! What could go wrong?
radio penetrates rock? (Score:2)
Many years ago, before most of you were born, I was a spelunker. We couldn't communicate underground with radios, or even listen to radios, because (I was told) radio waves don't penetrate rock very well. So how is this radar detecting a tunnel hidden under many meters (I presume) of rock? Is it because the radar is sending out that many watts of power? Or is relatively wet rock (which limestone caves are surrounded by) much more effective at blocking radio waves?
The wikipedia article on ground-penetrat
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what are the interplanetary tax codes say.... time to grandfather in a corporation
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Moon dust is so tiny and sharp that the astronauts who last visited almost died from having their suits compromised. I don't know if that's where you want to build a colony.
STOP!... Don't confuse me with facts....
The Lunar surface is a horrible place to set up housekeeping, no matter how you slice it or where you go. Underground is a bit more attractive, but still space is a cruel reality for the living, where there are more ways to die than you can imagine.
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